In this video, our Director Brendan Donnelly and Chairman John Stevens discuss Partygate and its possible implications for the next General Election. They fear that the dysfunction introduced into the British political system by Brexit and its advocates may allow Boris Johnson to survive this challenge to his Premiership. WATCH [...]
Professor Julian Hoppit (UCL) talks about his new book “The Dreadful Monster and its Poor Relations – taxing, spending and the United kingdom 1707-2021” with Professor Colin Talbot (University of Manchester and The Federal Trust). Modern arguments over public finances within the UK, and how far the nations of England, [...]
March 2022 sees the release of A League-Union of the Isles. Conceived as a reflection on Glyndwr Cennydd Jones’s constitutional writing since 2016, it encompasses an exploration of devolution, federalism, confederalism, and more significantly—that possible middle ground—confederal-federalism. Not wishing to alienate the generally moderate elements of both unionism and nationalism [...]
In this new video, John Stevens and Brendan Donnelly discuss the idea of some pro-Europeans, including now the Liberal Democrats, that the UK should seek to rejoin the EU by small steps. They conclude that such gradualism has little chance of success, since it will be unattractive to the EU [...]
In this interview, our Senior Research Fellow Professor Colin Talbot talks to Professor Rod Rhodes of Southampton University about relations between UK central government and local and regional tiers of government. In 1988, Professor Rhodes published his seminal book on this topic, “Beyond Westminster and Whitehall”. At the time the dominant [...]
In this Federal Trust video, our Chairman John Stevens and Director Brendan Donnelly discuss the latest developments in the war in Ukraine and the war’s dramatic impact on the EU and the UK: WATCH THE VIDEO HERE Or in the player below: SPEAKERS: Brendan Donnelly is the director of [...]
The war, in which the Ukrainian army and citizens are defending the sovereignty of their country against foreign aggression, is about values. The values of human dignity, respect for life, democracy and the rule of law are under attack from a superpower, which is still thinking in geopolitical terms of [...]
In this video, our Chairman John Stevens and Director Brendan Donnelly discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences for European security. They describe the radical change that has now taken place in European and particularly German thinking about security. They predict much greater future cohesion within the EU [...]
In this video our Chairman John Stevens and Director Brendan Donnelly discuss the possibility and desirability of a campaign to rejoin the European Union. They accept that the current political system of the United Kingdom poses formidable barriers to any such campaign. They argue however that Rejoin campaigners need not [...]
The Federal Trust is launching an initiative – INTERGOV - to create a forum for better communications and understanding of intergovernmental relations within the United Kingdom. We believe the time is propitious for this new initiative. The devolution settlements are rapidly mutating, not least as a result of Brexit ,and [...]
